And here are two different HuffPost Live segments I have done in the last odd-week. I am never sure how they go, because it’s a fundamentally slightly weird format for a discussion. But they call me back when they need a spare libertarian, so that bodes well. One is on the zombie rise of neoconservative, and the other is on Rand Paul and the Fed.

And finally, finishing up the self-promotion, I uploaded my last five radio shows to Mixcloud, in case anyone is interested, or missed them because they were at 3 pm and people have jobs, for God’s sake. Listen, your life needs more “Old Time (More Or Less).” When I listen I marvel at my inconsistency in quality for mic breaks. When I have something to say on the song, be it “Poor Ellen Smith” or “Strange Fruit,” on the other hand, I am not half bad.

I have just discovered a new love — Fortean Times Magazine. I haven’t really checked out the website, but the print mag was delicious and well worth $11. I aim to contribute sometime soon. (I Google Image searched “fortean” and got the above, awesome Terry Colon cartoon. If Terry Colon every does a cartoon of me/you/anyone, they’ve made it in life. Spiritually, at least.

Terry Colon also explains the mechanics of UFO fuel in a way that makes at least as much sense as anything ever on Doctor Who — except maybe “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.”

Speaking of things Fortean, sort of, please do check out Jesse Walker’s new United States of Paranoia. It is excellent and mentions most of the most interesting things about America such as witch trials, Indian captives, communists, drugs, The X Files, militias, and the fear that Satan is sending children secret backwards messages in their music.

Can we talk for a second about how all of the Satanist sex abuse panics happened in the 20th century — the LATE 20th century? I will say it again, forget the blacklist, Arthur Miller should have written an awkwardly unsubtle allegory that is still really kick-ass about that shit. Some of those investigators might as well have used spectral evidence for all of the real-world basis their allegations had. Vile.

I would love to see Jezebel do a lot more of this: this blog says would-be NYC Mayor Christine Quinn cannot be against street harassment/cat-calling if she also supports Stop and Frisk. THIS, Jezebel — apply your support of abortion rights to the bodily autonomy issues related to, say the drug war, or myriad other issues. Take your good feminist inclinations and correctness about smaller issues, and extend into life and death and imprisonment and freedom level of issues. Please.

The lockdown was something new. Not serial killers, not cop-killing cop Christopher Dorner’s LA rampage, not even 9/11 shut down a city like this. Still, Bostonians seemed fine with staying inside for the most part. Cops found their guy relatively quickly, and the city partied in the streets afterwards. During the manhunt, a tough-looking officer even brought two gallons of milk to a family with young children, serving as a perfect meme to refute any accusations of jackbooted thuggery. Even some normally anti-police libertarians urged restraint in reacting to the manhunt.

What shouldn’t go unmentioned, however, is that while the circumstances were unique, the military muscle displayed by law enforcement is hardly reserved for responding to rare acts of terrorism. Videos from the lockdown—particularly this piece of paranoia-porn, in which a SWAT team orders a family out of their home at gunpoint and one of the officers screams “get away from the window!” at the videographer—either look frightening or grimly necessary, according to your views. But haven’t we seen displays like this before?

Those who say that the above high level of police intrusion was due to the unique seriousness of the situation in Boston had better explain what cops are doing with their expensive toys during the other 360 days of the year. A suspected bomb-toting terrorist is cause for specific, serious law enforcement measures (if not an excuse to impose martial law on an entire metro area). But a visit from cops that look like soldiers is a reality for 150 people per day who are targeted by police raids—mostly on suspicion of possessing or selling narcotics.

A few days ago I had another piece published on VICE. This one was — ideally — fodder to annoy statists and conspiracy theorists both.

According to a poll released last week by Public Policy Polling, 4 percent of Americans—quotes are essential here—“believe shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining power.” That was the silliest bit of a survey of 1,200-odd adults on conspiracy theories that ranged from “Wait, didn’t that at least mostly happen?” (whether George W. Bush “intentionally misled the public about the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to promote the Iraq war”) to half-baked ideas conceived by dorm-room stoners 40 years ago (“Do you believe Paul McCartney actually died in a car crash in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a lookalike so the Beatles could continue, or not?”).

These results were passed around the media to much amusement over the apparently stupid, partisan naïveté of Americans. But it’s really not as bad as the Atlantic Wire headline declaring that “12 million Americans Believe Lizard People Run Our Country” indicates. For one thing, as Reason’s Jesse Walker pointed out, it would be awfully tempting to troll any pollsters inquiring about your feelings towards Roswell, the Reptilians, and whether Obama is the Antichrist (13 percent, for the record, said he was).

For another, not all the theories PPP asked people about are as nutty as the idea that the moon landing was faked (7 percent of respondents believe it was) or a belief in Bigfoot or Sasquatch (14 percent are on board). If you squint, you can see the logical roots of some of them: while the US government probably didn’t consciously allow 9/11 to happen (11 percent say it did), and Osama bin Laden seems to really be dead and gone (despite the 6 percent of folks who say he’s still out there), the former conspiracy theory is aided by the staggering lapses in security and intelligence preceding the attacks, while the latter can be chalked up to the Obama administration’s refusal to release photos of bin Laden’s bullet-ridden body.

Yesterday, the Associated Press declared that the phrase illegal immigrant was no longer kosher, which is a big deal, since when the AP changes its style guide, newspapers around the country go along with it. Naturally, many people (mostly conservatives) responded to the tiny tweak with howls—and tweets—of derision.

The AP’s reasoning for this fairly mild mandate is that illegal shouldn’t be a descriptor for a person; indeed, “No person is illegal” is a common pro-immigration slogan. “Illegal should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally,” Kathleen Carroll, a senior vice president and executive editor at the AP, wrote to explain the decision. So you can say, “Chen illegally overstayed his visa and lived illegally in the United States,” but Chen himself is not an illegal immigrant. Nor is he an undocumented worker, or an illegal alien, terms which have already fallen out of AP favor.

Though there are meaty—if often abstract and geeky—debates to be had over language, from the legacy of theN word to rigidly enforced political correctness on college campuses. So far, this war of words has been filled with self-righteous, obnoxious carping about terminology, which is far less helpful than discussing whether it’s wrong for poor people to cross an imaginary line in search of better lives. But at the same time, this conscious word-choice change points at the bigger issue of why 11 million people who live and work in the US are treated as an invading army by so many of their fellows.

I wrote a thing about soda and freedom and stuff! It’s at VICE.com! Go read it, or even just stare at the visual the editor choose. It’s better than the one I am using, because I don’t want to spoil it for you. That’s how important this is.

I slept as well as a child on Christmas morning last night. My ego is as refreshed as a person who just chugged 20 ounces of Mexican Coke. I should probably write more, eh?

Yesterday afternoon my Aunt Soozy demonstrated heroic effort in order to find me a 3G-able phone spot so I could do a HuffPost Live segment on kids today and big government. We were, I might add, wandering through Northern California’s Avenue of the Giants (redwoods!) when I got the very last-minute email. But hurray, hurrah technology! It worked, thanks to my new phone!

Also present for the satisfyingly shouty encounter was Reason 24/7’s Jerry Tuccille, who I have never met in real life, but is clearly a dear human, based solely on internet interactions and conference calls quips. After I hung up I realized that the token lefty (yes, she was outnumbered, with two libertarians, one conservative and a seemingly conservative host! So strange, that.) had been none other than Moe Tkacik, long ago of Jezebel when it was better, and more recently of this libertarian-frenzy-inducing Gawker hit piece on Dorian Eletra, the maker of everyone’s second favorite song about Hayek (and there’s really no shame in second place, mind). So that was bizarre.

Still, it worked. I, as a Hit and Run commenter helpfully noted, botched the first question (and I have never been given the first question on anything!) for which the host read an idiotic quote by an Alternet writer full of every libertarian slur-cliche possible. But it — and I — got better, more comfortable, and more argumentative as it went on. Of course, Jerry tended to just underline my stammering points by being more articulate but the winner there was liberty, dammit.

Watch away, lovely readers. I would have combed my hair a little, but the aim is to be Moynihan on camera. Still working on that.

“…Quite simply, advocates for the state can have it both ways. Private charity can never feed all the hungry or mend the sick, they say, so we simply must have government. What’s that? You don’t have the proper papers for giving out that food? Sorry.

The New Deal arguably began the demise of mutual aid societies and other voluntary charities and social securities and the Great Society mostly finished the job. The current common attitude about charity is beautifully summed up by the late, great Harry Browne who said, “Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, “See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.”

And the Green Bay story is not unique. How about New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s restriction on food donations to the homeless (at government-run shelters) because calorie and salt counts could not be ascertained? How about the anarchist group Food, Not Bombs blocked from feeding the homeless in Orlando, with their members even jailed? How about Philadelphia’s ban on feeding the homeless in public? How about the loophole for the Green Bay Mayor’s legitimized pushiness, the very existence of zoning laws?…”